Month: December 2014

The finished cone-shaped rice mould. The sticky tape holds all the creases of the plastic bag together to give a reasonably smooth shape. The next stage is to make the “arty” cone over this mould.

The Hidden Revealed Transformed exhibition was a great success. We had over 100 people at the opening and over 200 people attend the exhibition during the following 2 weeks. We sold quite a few works. We broke even on the colour catalogue. Now I’m starting to think about new work. The Ceremonial Bowls from the exhibition which had been photographed with a tea light inside had prompted me to think about creating lanterns.

Since reading about creating 3D works over a rice mould I thought that might be the way to go for creating lanterns. You have to have an opening big enough to remove a mould. The bowls were created over a solid mould (another bowl) so the opening is very large. With a rice mould you can puncture the mould to let the rice out and then gently pull the plastic out – so the opening doesn’t have to be very large. That’s the theory – I’m about to put it to the test. I created a cone shape from old x-ray plastic (so that I can make several the same shape if it works) and covered it with a plastic bag and lots of sticky tape.

Rice Mould construction. Plastic bag over x-ray plastic cone, taped to form a shaped bag for the rice.

I removed the x-ray plastic and filled the bag with rice sealing the base with more sticky tape. I kept tapping and patting it into shape as I went so that it became quite solid. The next stage is to wind yarn around it, or layer paper/fabric over it, or a combination – I’m not quite sure which.